Pretzel grabbed Whip's arm, tugging him away from the wall just as it was swallowed by a surging mass of the rot-mold. The mold grew and spread over the walls with frightening speed, and Pretzel could only watch in horror as the mosaic and the images of their past were covered once more. The red crystals continued to pulse, and now it seemed the rot-mold pulsed with them, all in time with the same alien rhythm. In the center of the cavern the mold surged into a lump, then a pillar, throbbing all the while like a beating heart. And then it burst open in a spray of red.
Immediately the feeling of wrongness increased. The world seemed to invert, then turn red, then tilt on its side. Vertigo seized Pretzel, and Whip's fingers dug into her arm as they both fought to keep their balance. She knew on some level they weren't actually falling, but the dizzy feeling persisted and her vision danced. A strange whirring, whining sound rang in her head, drowning out thought. The wrongness retreated for a blissful moment, then hit again, washing over her like a wave in time with the pulsing of the crystals.
It's a distraction tactic, whispered a voice in Pretzel's head that sounded suspiciously like Twist. Focus.
Pretzel grit her teeth and dug her claws into the ground (when had she landed?), trying to see through the dizzy redness in her vision. Something was standing where the mass of rot had been. Something person-shaped, something alive.
Their enemy. The final fragment of the corruption that had ruined them. The wrongness retreated again, and Pretzel saw the figure clearly. The shape was humanoid, even Mobian, but the creature wasn't any animal that belonged on this world. Its slick black skin was striped with red, and its head came to three points, like a crown or a jester's cap. Its hands and feet were clawed, and its tail ended in a wicked spike. Its eyes were pure black with reptilian irises. In a strange way, the black and red color palette reminded Pretzel of Shadow, if Shadow had been some sort of alien demon here to destroy the world.
"You are pathetic," the thing said. Its voice was strangely normal, young and masculine, yet at the same time distorted, like it was being filtered through a bad speaker. Or was the "normal" voice the filter, a mask over the true face? "Hardly worthy to be called Gaia. It is fortunate for this world that I am here to take your place."
"You're no Gaia!" Whip snapped. "You're not like us!"
"No," the thing agreed. "I'm better. I've eclipsed you."
The wrongness was back, turning the world on its head. Pretzel wanted nothing more than to hide until the nauseating feeling passed. But she stood up anyway.
"Bold words. But we don't die easy."
"I don't intend to kill you," Eclipse sneered. "I intend to become you."
The world twisted, and this time they really were falling. Pretzel snapped her wings open and rolled to the side to avoid one of the crystals on the wall, but she was just a moment too slow. It left a long, dark gash on her side, stinging with dull pain. Whip had recovered faster, already flying back toward the floor-turned-ceiling… but then the world twisted again, and he barely pulled up in time to stop himself from smashing into the stone.
While Whip was still regaining his bearings, Eclipse moved. One moment it was in the center of the cavern, the next it had appeared right next to Whip, seizing him by the wing before he could react. Pretzel dove to help, but Eclipse looked up at her and the cavern turned on its side. Pretzel flailed to course correct, but the pull of gravity changed yet again and she was slammed into a crystal. She gasped as the spear of red stabbed through her wing.
"Pretzel!" Whip shouted. He kicked out at Eclipse—who was unaffected by the gravity change—and wrenched himself from the infection's grasp.
Pretzel grit her teeth and braced herself against one of the other crystals in the cluster. With a yell of pain she pulled her wing free, leaving a smear of black liquid on the crystal that quickly evaporated. Her wound continued to sting, however, and no healing came.
"Be careful!" Pretzel called to Whip as he flew to join her. "These things interfere with our healing."
"We have healing?"
Right. Pretzel kept forgetting how new to this he was.
She didn't have time to respond to him. The crystal beneath her shifted, and tiny new crystals sprouted from its surface, pricking her feet. Hastily she took to the air, wincing from the pain in her injured wing, but then gravity shifted again and suddenly she was flying in entirely the wrong direction. Whip yelled and reached out his hand—he'd corrected faster than her once again, though in her defense he wasn't injured—, but Pretzel missed his grasp. Something else caught her instead; claws and the smell of rot.
Eclipse slashed through Pretzel's good wing, tearing the membrane completely, then seized her throat before she could even scream. Its claws started to tighten, but Whip slammed into it from above with a battle cry. He wasn't big enough to knock it over, but while it was stumbling from the impact Pretzel slashed the spike on her tail across its wrist and dropped free. She scrambled across the cavern and huddled in the shadows, panting. Her ripped wing still burned with pain, smoke bleeding from the torn edges. Pretzel freed, Whip pulled away from Eclipse, darting up to the center of the room before it could grab him. Hopefully he'd be safe from gravity changes there.
Eclipse tutted. "You always have to fight, don't you? This would be a lot simpler if you'd just let me do what I need to do."
It snapped its fingers, and the twisted shadows cast by the glowing crystals moved, surging over Whip. He gasped and spun in the air like he was blinded, flailing in the dark. Pretzel snarled. That was her trick. How dare it use it against her brother? She reached for the shadows, trying to pull them from Whip. For a moment they seemed to obey—only to form into a dark spear and stab through Whip's wing, pinning him to the wall. Red crystals jabbed into his limbs. Whip screamed. Eclipse laughed.
"Stop it!" Pretzel yelled, stepping towards the infection. "Leave him alone!"
Eclipse glanced at her and smirked. "Fine."
The nearby crystals dimmed, and a globe of light formed in Eclipse's hands. It tossed the light towards her and Pretzel scrambled to the side, but a mere flick of its finger turned the light after her once more. A spear of burning pain stabbed through her chest. Pretzel staggered, too stunned to even cry out. Through the haze of pain she saw Eclipse sauntering towards her, light in one hand and dark in the other. Of course. The infection had corrupted both Dark Gaia and Light Gaia, and though their core consciousnesses—Pretzel and Whip—had broken free, a large part of their power was still under its sway. How were they supposed to fight something like this?
Pretzel blinked away the tears of pain and looked past Eclipse. Above them both, Whip was writhing and shouting, struggling to get free, though Pretzel knew how much being stabbed like that hurt. She met his desperate gaze and felt a surge of renewed strength. There was one thing they had that Eclipse didn't.
Pretzel huddled on the ground, feigning that she was too overcome with pain to do anything else. It wasn't a hard act. Eclipse raised a spear of light, aimed at her head… and Pretzel dove towards it, letting the light spear through her already ruined wing while the rest of her slammed into Eclipse. It stumbled back, snarling, and gravity shifted again, pulling her away from it. Perfect.
Pretzel leaned into the fall and locked eyes with Whip, now below her. He growled and put his hands on the shadow spear holding him in place. With Eclipse distracted below, it couldn't stop the spear from burning away. Whip pulled himself forward and stretched out his hand, reaching for Prtezel. Below, Eclipse realized what was happening and gravity shifted again—but too late. Whip had one hand wrapped around a crystal and the other clutching onto Pretzel, leaving them dangling together from the new ceiling.
"What do we do?" Whip gasped out. "He's stronger than both of us."
"Stronger than us, maybe," Pretzel agreed. "But not stronger than all of us."
"The fragments? But we absorbed them, remember?"
"We did, and we left it at that. But we're Gaias, Whip. We have our power back now, or at least what wasn't corrupted by that thing. We just need to use it."
Whip's ears flattened. "B-but what if we become like— like that again?" The images on the walls had been covered by the infection, but they both knew what he was referring to. "I don't want to be a monster."
Pretzel swallowed. "Neither do I." The crystals were pulsing in time to the infection's heartbeat. That was wrong. This place was theirs. This world was theirs. This power was theirs. It was time they took it back. "But we aren't monsters. We're Gaias. And more importantly, we're Pretzel and Whip." She dug her claws into the crystals and pulled herself up so she and Whip were eye to eye. "Do you think I'm a monster?"
"Of course not," Whip said immediately. "That's not who you are."
"And it's not who you are, either. We know each other. We know who we are. And who we are is not what we did back then. As long as we remember that, we'll be alright."
"You really believe that?"
"I wouldn't say it if I didn't."
Whip smiled. "Okay. Let's do it."
They let go.
I need you, Pretzel said to the fragments. To the pieces of herself. All of her—the rage and the calm, the hurt and the joy, the hatred and the love. Every mistake she'd made, every bond she'd forged, every step of the journey that had taken her here.
She called, and they answered. The glory of a tidal wave, the clarity of starlit ice, the beauty of a moonless night. It filled her and all her empty spaces, broken pieces slotting into place and together forming something new. And then it surged outward, unfurling like a flower impatient to bloom.
Her wings spread like the night sky, her claws glistened like ice, and her scales flowed like water. She'd taken this form before, when she'd drawn on the world's darkness to fight Light Gaia. Sonic had compared it to a dragon, but at the time she'd hardly felt worthy of that moniker. She'd still been afraid, then, afraid to claim herself, and so she'd skirted away from her "true" form towards something less monstrous. But this time things were different. She knew now that there was no "true" form. She was darkness and water; she could take whatever shape she wanted, as terrifying and monstrous or as innocuous and unnoticeable as she pleased, and all of them were still her. Dark Gaia and Pretzel both.
This time, she wasn't hiding.
Pretzel's eyes, all of them, opened, and she saw for what felt like the first time. The crystals still pulsed, and the cavern was still bathed in red and coated in rot. But now, rather than be overwhelmed by the sensations, she saw the picture as it really was. This wasn't an insurmountable terror or an unbeatable monster. This wasn't a horror movie. This was just a mess to be cleaned up.
This was pest control.
Pretzel opened her wings, stopping her descent. Whip did the same beside her. He'd changed as well, and now he could almost be called intimidating, assuming you knew nothing about him. Despite their bigger forms, the cavern still fit them both perfectly. It was made for them, after all, regardless of the infection's attempts to change it.
Whip's wings weren't single shards anymore, but a full array of brilliant green crystal feathers. Additional ears crowned his head like flower petals, and his white ruff had become a fire-blue mane. His paws were clawed; the back paws were those of a lion (of Nova), while the front were the talons of an eagle, or a phoenix. Once that might have frightened her, but he wasn't her enemy anymore. He never had been. That honor belonged to the creature below them.
Pretzel grinned at him. Whip grinned back.
Eclipse stumbled back, eyes wide, before recovering itself. "This means nothing," it spat.
The world tilted and distorted again, but this time, Pretzel saw through it. Two of her eyes saw the illusion Eclipse was casting, but through the others she saw the cavern as it was actually supposed to be. She let that image be her reality, and refused to let it throw her off balance. Whip stayed right beside her, his eyes closed and ears twitching as if listening to a voice she couldn't hear.
"That won't work anymore," Pretzel said, looking down at Eclipse.
Eclipse snarled. The rot-mold from the walls surged towards it, crawling over its body and enlarging its form with bulky armor. Large wings sprouted from its back. It launched into the air and arrowed toward them, one clawed hand extended before it, Light and Dark energy gathering in its palm.
Pretzel and Whip dove to either side, the shot ripping between them. Pretzel swept past the corrupted crystals, their tips just grazing her scales, then turned sharply and shot back towards Eclipse. Whip mirrored her on the other side of the cavern; they couldn't have been more in sync if they'd choreographed it.
Eclipse spun to face them, but it was slow, far too slow. Pretzel met Whip's eyes, and they both grinned. Then, together, they slammed into Eclipse. Light and shadow intertwined in a dizzying display, and Eclipse's armor was sliced through by claws of ice and fire, exposing the vulnerable creature beneath.
"This isn't the end," Eclipse hissed. "Even if I am gone, you are still nothing more than the broken pieces of a Gaia, too weak to protect this world from what is coming."
"Shut up," Pretzel said. And together, she and Whip slashed the last of the infection through, dissolving its form into smoke.
Pretzel's claws met Whip's, and they spun in the air, interlocked and in perfect sync. Pretzel's shadows trailed behind her like a cloak, while Whip's white light followed him like a comet's tail. As they spun together, so did their trails, twining into a braid of light and shadow. But rather than destroy each other, they grew stronger for the contrast, energy building between them. Too soon they reached the roof of the cavern. Pretzel nodded to Whip, and they broke apart, diving back down the cavern walls. And as they parted, the energy that had built between them exploded. It surged through the core, freezing cold and burning heat, blasting the rot-mold from the walls and shattering the corrupted crystals into shards that fell like rain.
Pretzel and Whip landed next to each other. Together, they watched the infection dissolve from the core, revealing the ancient murals once more. As the crystals fell, the red light at last faded from within them, leaving the shards clear as glass. They'd regrow, eventually, in their proper colors this time.
When at last the cavern was completely cleaned, the energy returned to the Gaias. Pretzel smiled and lifted her head, breathing in air that was at last free of the smell of rot. That tight knot in her chest, her constant companion since she woke up all those months ago, finally, finally loosened completely. They'd done it. The infection was gone.
"Is that it?" Whip asked. "Is it over?"
"Not quite," Pretzel said.
They both looked up at the center of the cavern. There, where Eclipse had been destroyed, hung a cluster of tangled light and darkness. Their corrupted energy, now purified. The last piece. With the mural behind it, it almost looked like it was held in Ixis's claws.
"Now that the infection's gone…" Whip began hesitantly. "Does that mean we'll be one Gaia again?" He looked at Pretzel, ears flat. "Should we be one Gaia again? Was Eclipse right about us being too weak as we are?"
Pretzel looked up at the mural, trying to read Ixis's expression. Sorrowful? Serene? The memory they'd received had been confused, jumbled. Had Ixis understood what was happening to it? Had it known it was dying?
What had Ixis been like, really? In the memory, it seemed young, a child by Gaia standards. Would it have grown into something compassionate, caring? Or would it have become a cruel and harsh deity? How much had it been like her, and how much had it been like Whip?
They would never know. Maybe they didn't need to.
"Whatever we were back then," Pretzel said, turning away from the mural to face her brother. "I, personally, prefer what we are now. Don't you?"
Whip smiled. "Definitely." Then he frowned. "But Eclipse said—"
"Eclipse doesn't know anything," Pretzel said, rolling her eyes. "So some dying fragment of a disease believes we'd be stronger as one Gaia. Do you really think it had any idea what it was talking about? And besides," she grinned at him. "Even if something bad is coming, I'd think two Gaias would have a better shot at dealing with it than one, right?"
"Right," Whip said, fully smiling now. He looked up at the mass of Gaia energy in the center of the cavern. "Should we go, then?"
"Let's."
Together they flew to the center of the cavern. They locked eyes on last time, then reached into the energy.
I really hope I was right about this, Pretzel had a moment to think, and then the power flooded through her.
Suddenly the whole planet was spread before her mind's eye. For an overwhelming moment she was the whole planet, the fish in the sea, the trees in the forest, all the little flying insects and massive whales. She was every unaware person all at once, a countless number of names and faces and dreams and heartaches all washing over her like a tidal wave. It was a terrifying, overwhelming sensation, and she was glad to feel Whip's hand gripping hers, to know he was bearing this with her. She grit her teeth and pushed through the awareness like she was swimming for the surface. The overwhelming rush of power and connection faded, settling into something more comfortable, more controllable. She let it settle within her, adjusting to this new piece of herself. And then, carefully, she used it.
It was easy to find where the fragments, goaded on by the corrupt remnant, had wreaked havoc. She found the touch of her own power on coastal cities and island nations and carefully, carefully stretched out her new energy, urging the trees and plants and seas to heal and regrow. Whip was right there beside her, fixing the damage from his own fragments, and when either of them slipped up, the other was there to correct it.
She could feel Whip's desire to fix everything, even what hadn't been directly their fault, and she gently reined him in. They couldn't fix everything; it was neither possible with their current abilities nor advisable, for their sakes and the sakes of the people on the planet. This was a team effort. But… well, Earth had been without a proper Gaia for a while now. So what if they regrew a few barren lands and healed a few scarred trees? They were just making up for lost time.
It was slow and meticulous work. Their energy could do good, but only if it was used properly. And they had to work in tandem; if Pretzel poured a little too much into one area without Whip there to balance her out, she might accidentally give an entire city depression. But they could, at least, fix some of the damage their own powers had caused.
Pretzel was in the middle of regrowing a grove of trees Hurricane had accidentally wiped out when she felt something familiar. An old connection clicked into proper place, like someone who'd put her on hold had finally picked up the phone.
Sonic? Pretzel asked, surprised.
She felt the surprise returned to her, along with an overwhelming weariness. Evidently he had not had a restful past few days. Well, that made two of them.
Pretzel? You seem different.
So do you.
Sonic's mind often tended to be cluttered and chaotic, but it was usually in a bright, energetic way, not this exhausted, pained mess of confusion. Something had happened on that space station that he was having trouble grappling with, but the radiating aura of exhaustion told her now was not a good time to talk about it.
A lot's happened. We can catch up when you're back on the surface. It was both a promise and a threat.
I'll look forward to it, Sonic said, some of his usual humor returning, along with an unmistakable wave of relief.
"Sonic's back," Pretzel said, opening her eyes to meet Whip's curious gaze. At some point during the repairs they'd both reverted to their usual forms. Or could they be called usual forms, when they'd only used them for a few months out of their millennia of existence? Whatever. Pretzel liked this shape.
"I know," Whip said. "Is he okay?"
Pretzel made a so-so gesture. "Not right now. I didn't press him, but…"
"Maybe we can get him to take a vacation," Whip mused. "He's been doing our job for us for a while now."
"I think we'd have to ship him off to another planet to get him to stop saving this one," Pretzel said dryly.
"And he'd probably end up saving that other planet anyway," Whip giggled.
"Probably,'' Pretzel agreed, rolling her eyes.
They continued working for a while—how long, Pretzel wasn't sure. She hadn't imagined Gaias could get tired, but at some point she woke to find herself and Whip curled together on the floor of the cavern. There was no indication of how much time had passed, not without sun and moon in sight. Whip snored beside her, and Pretzel smiled. She reached out with her expanded senses and was satisfied to find they'd mostly finished the job. The wounds caused by the fragments had been healed as best they could. The humans and Mobians would finish the clean-up.
Pretzel laid her head on her arm, letting herself just breathe. Beside her, she felt Whip stir, yawning and blinking. She expected him to start bouncing around with his usual overflowing energy, but to her surprise he stayed put. They both lay there in silence, looking around at the cavern. All of it, every rock and crystal and ancient mural, felt intimately familiar. This was their resting place, where they'd slept away all the centuries between their battles. It was as much their core as the Earth's.
And yet… and yet it was so empty. Just two small Gaias and a whole lot of rocks. No dark nooks to sleep in, no TV for Whip to turn up way too loud, no childishly stitched sign in the kitchen for Amy to get embarrassed over. Many people would kill to see a place so magnificent, ancient and untouched. Yet Pretzel found it, more than anything else, boring.
"So… what do we do now?" Whip asked, always the first to break the silence. "Do we have to stay down here? Because that sounds super boring."
Pretzel smiled. She knew the answer; they both did. "Isn't it obvious? Now we go home."
This chapter was originally supposed to go up two days ago, on Sonic's birthday and the same day as the last few chapters of Black & White, but then, well, life happened.
After this is the epilogue and then To The Core is finished! I should warn you that the epilogue ends with a cliffhanger/sequel hook. Since it'll probably be a while before I write said sequel (more on that in the Black & White end notes), feel free to stop here if you don't want to be left hanging.
Thank you to everyone who read this very self-indulgent, (semi)OC-centric fic. I was really surprised and touched by the positive response Pretzel received in Leashed, and I hope everyone enjoyed seeing her and Whip develop further here. Every favorite and review this fic received is greatly appreciated. I had a great time writing this, and I can only hope everyone had just as much fun reading it. Until next time!✌️